New huge failure for Meta in its ambition to enter the cryptocurrency industry. After abandoning the Diem stablecoin project, Mark Zuckerberg’s company is now shutting down Novi, a digital wallet for storing cryptocurrencies
Meta ends Novi
Meta’s second attempt to foray into the cryptocurrency industry is likely to end in another failure. The digital wallet project for crypto-currencies, Novi, is expected to end very soon.
Withdraw your funds before the Novi pilot ends on September 1. For more information, visit the Novi Help Center: https://t.co/gvRBl4AdDt pic.twitter.com/WR0YLae5hX
– Novi (@novi) June 30, 2022
At the time of writing, the Novi project homepage has been modified to inform users that the wallet will be decommissioned as of September 1. Until then, the platform invites all users to withdraw their funds and export their transaction data.
This decision brings to an end an eight-month pilot project, which began in October 2021. Announced in 2020 as Calibra and later renamed Novi, the digital wallet was currently only available in the US and Guatemala. Also, note that very few users currently had access to it.
Meta’s projects are collapsing one by one
To develop this project, Meta had partnered with Paxos, the issuer of the stablecoin USDP, and Coinbase Custody, to manage customer funds. Mark Zuckerberg’s main ambition was to demonstrate the value of stablecoins as a payment instrument “beyond the way they are commonly used today”.
However, this announcement of the closure of the Novi programme comes five months after the sale of Meta’s other major project: the Diem stablecoin. Initially, Zuckerberg’s company planned to integrate the token into the platform and make it the cornerstone of the Meta ecosystem.
As soon as the Novi pilot project was announced, US legislators quickly objected. Some senators even asked Meta to abandon their idea immediately. Finally, after forcing the company to sell Diem’s intellectual property to Silvergate, regulatory pressure in the US led it to abandon Novi.
That said, these two failures do not signal the end of Meta’s Web 3.0 projects. On his own Facebook profile, Marc Zuckerberg announced the transition from Facebook Pay to Meta Pay. This will be marked by the introduction of a new digital wallet for the metaverse “that allows you to securely manage who you are, what you own, and how you pay”.
